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No, im actually sticking to everything the dev said.. I clearly state that quote: "...we cant be sure how well all this will work on release date....and.."Two things for me are still an unknown... Threat management and the "fighter of shadow" tree... " Doesnt seem like im making any major assumptions..Only going by what is written down,.. But let my quotes speak for themselves...

If you want to disagree with me, feel free to. But dont say things that are clearly not true.. That makes me a sad face

First up, LOL @ ANOTHER guard dev, they just don't seem to stick around.

My biggest problem with the dev diary is this: the idea of 'Threat Tree' and 'Tanking Tree'. Lets be very clear (and I intend no disrespect) THREAT and TANKING are inextricably linked together. You can't be a Tank class without threat, so having those as parallel ideas is just ridiculous. Blue line was NOT a 'threat' line it was an AoE tanking line (most of the skills dealt with threat, true, but that is what made an AoE tank a TANK) and Yellow was not a 'tank' line it was a single target survivability line. It really feels like this dev has completely misunderstood what makes a guard a guard. Talking about "...charging headlong into battle, covered in plate, and swinging a giant axe..." to me says champ, and not guard. I like charging headlong into battle with my giant SHIELD defending my friends while they swing giant axes at things.

Mindless threat is just a deal breaker for me. I mean seriously he mentioned 'active survivability' but mentioned ZERO additional survivability skills. Does this mean things are actually going to start hitting harder (and thus making survivability actually matter)? Outside of a 'Fortifaction' buff, which who knows how that is obtained, what other survivability are we going to have to work on? I mean do I just spam Guards Ward for my rotation now or what? Also, give another Burg mark seems totally like a guardian 'thing'.

This statement worries me in the Fighter of Shadow paragraphs: "I also provided this line with the ability to block with two-handed weapons, and provided a bit more access to AoE attacks, an area where the other two lines are a bit weak."

Uh, so what skills will we have to hold aggro on multiple mobs if we're main tank and defender of the free? Spam 2 skills (litany + shield taunt) every time they're available and we win?

Also, are we still going be the reactive type (block + parry responses) or are we switching to a more proactive tanking & dps style?

For dps: stackable bleeds are mostly useful in long fights. It sounds like our dps line will be SINGLE TARGET cuz we'll lack aoe attacks. So on top of poor aoe dps, our single target dps could very well be of limited use.

Any less information in these dev diaries and I'd think a monkey was smashing buttons on a keyboard.

[center][img]http://i58.tinypic.com/2wrm5ja_th.jpg[/img][/center]
[center]Let our actions speak for themselves. Jinjaah has been pouring over every post in the Bullroarer forum. Please keep in mind that any experiences with previous LOTRO teams are not reflective of the current team, give us a chance[/center]

This statement worries me in the Fighter of Shadow paragraphs: "I also provided this line with the ability to block with two-handed weapons, and provided a bit more access to AoE attacks, an area where the other two lines are a bit weak."

Uh, so what skills will we have to hold aggro on multiple mobs if we're main tank and defender of the free? Spam 2 skills (litany + shield taunt) every time they're available and we win?

Also, are we still going be the reactive type (block + parry responses) or are we switching to a more proactive tanking & dps style?

For dps: stackable bleeds are mostly useful in long fights. It sounds like our dps line will be SINGLE TARGET cuz we'll lack aoe attacks. So on top of poor aoe dps, our single target dps could very well be of limited use.

Any less information in these dev diaries and I'd think a monkey was smashing buttons on a keyboard.

As far as the Defender of the Free line goes, all we have is this Dev Diary and this blurb from the "Revitalize Your Role" page:

"A stout and determined survivor, The Defender of the Free uses single-target and area-of-effect taunts with effective block-based skills, but also has parry-response skills for increased damage."

It does seem to suggest that we will still have block + parry responses.

A champ with a question...

Um... threat changes? What sort of threat changes? For guards only or across the board? (Admittedly it can be difficult to manage on my RK, but threat management is one aspect I love about my champion :P (whether decreasing or increasing it))

I don't think easy threat management is a problem. For one thing, I don't think threat management is difficult right now at all. With a solid first age belt and liberal use of CtD and engage. You should be able to hold aggro in any reasonable situation. There is a certain other MMO out there, its quite popular, you may have heard of it. Tanking in that game is very easy in terms of threat management. Tanking traited characters get an inherent +500% threat buff iirc. Because you don't have to spend time focusing your rotation on generating the most threat possible it allows the classes to be focused on more active means of mitigation. Their tanks also do a decent amount of damage, which is always nice.

Personally, I would prefer easy threat management and a focus on active mitigation rather than difficult threat management and a very passive approach to mitigation.

The was something in the dev diary that I believe is of much more concern to us. In the FoS section, it says "provided a bit more access to AoE attacks, an area where the other two lines are a bit weak". It says that the other two lines are weak on AoE. Meaning our actual tank line is weak on AoE. If that refers to the number of targets we can reach with AoE taunts/challenge. This is going to be a very very bad thing for us.

If that is the case, I would strongly suggest reconsidering this. We should have the base ability to hit 10 targets with challenge and at least one regular taunt like litany. I hate that right now, I have to have two legacies and 6 traits in order to be properly effective in AoE situations. Weak on AoE attacks is fine. Weak on AoE threat is not.

Personally, I would prefer easy threat management and a focus on active mitigation rather than difficult threat management and a very passive approach to mitigation.

Isn't that a Warden?

[center][img]http://i58.tinypic.com/2wrm5ja_th.jpg[/img][/center]
[center]Let our actions speak for themselves. Jinjaah has been pouring over every post in the Bullroarer forum. Please keep in mind that any experiences with previous LOTRO teams are not reflective of the current team, give us a chance[/center]

As expected, these trait trees are going to be the absolute death of the game. I've said it before but I'll say it again, Trait trees do NOT work.

Now I see that its even worse with a Guard Dev that hasnt apparently played the class except "in other games" and all of these changes are being handled in an absurdly inappropriate fashion for this game.

Throw in even more hidden changes such as significant changes to Threat (Again, if anyone remembers the Moria threat fiasco) and it makes it more and more apparent that the Devs are looking to make changes for absolutely NO REASON other than to give the "systems team" something to do to earn a paycheck.

And apparently our Yellow line has us turning into Captains. Bravo. /golfclap I thought the point of these changes was to prevent Homogenization not Strengthen it.

Having not read much of the previous comments (it's a late night here) I did want to thank Verizal for an excellent dev diary. I did read a few initial posts (sorry if I've missed something important since then) and noticed a lot of concern about threat.

But to be honest... I'm having the opposite reaction.

My experience as a tank: I stand in one place and do nothing but spam my threat skills (mostly just to appear like I'm actually doing something, and also just to be doubly-sure that I don't lose aggro). There was no challenge to it. I skipped using most of my damage skills because they didn't do much damage anyway and my guardian is a power-hog (btw, that is one thing left unaddressed: power management!). I yawned my way through so many instances...

That is completely different from any other class I've taken into instances (particularly the minstrel). It just wasn't exciting. It was more of a faceroll. Unlike wardens, who (from what I understand) build threat over time and must actively work to hold that threat, a guardian just has to spam his forced aggro skills. Faceroll against 1 mob. Not much harder against multiple mobs. I just didn't have much fun.

But from what I'm reading in this dev diary, now maybe I can actually do something to contribute more in groups. Even if I still focus solely on tanking, I can dip into the other trees. Maybe get some bleeds from The Keen Blade, maybe some marking abilities from The Fighter of Shadow, all the while providing useful buffs while tanking in The Defender of the Free.

I really like what I have read. I still have major concerns about power management (considering how few skills guardians have to restore power, and how inefficient they seem to be) and captains did come to mind when I read about The Fighter of Shadow, but as to the rest of it I feel pretty excited.

Add me to the list of people very interested in more info on the mentioned threat changes in this diary.

Also, I think folks are jumping the gun on a couple of statements in this.

When it mentions "adding light damage", it doesn't necessarily mean light as a damage type (like Westernesse or Beleriand); it might well mean 'light' in the sense of minor.

When it says "future ease of threat management", I don't think we can jump to the conclusion that threat management will necessarily become automatic or not require any skill/understanding of the class/3pik l33tness.

In the German translation it's called "leichter Schaden", meaning little/less/minor damage. Because the people here thought of tactical light damage I was writing there if thex mixed up the translation becase of its 2 meanings, or if the German translation is right and the interpretion here is wrong or the other way around...
So I'll hope, someone can answer this.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for actually writing a developer diary instead of parroting the marketing promotion! :-) It is SO appreciated to have the first actual dev diary. Now might we have a burg dev diary, captain and champ diaries too please? ;-)

On threat mechanics, what is easier than hit it, threaten it?

The current dynamic provides easy active play for tanks. Run around to build threat on things that don't have enough, do DPS otherwise, budget your big threat skills for critical moments in the fight. It's obvious where your threat stands if you position so DPS is on the other side as the MOB so they turn around, or if you turn on the provided UI target's target--which acts as a provided (albeit gross) threat meter in game (at least it shows the top of the threat table for all the MOBs).

Now if instead you mean that the MOBs will be gaining a more sophisticated AI, such that they'll try to take down healers first regardless of other considerations (necessitating CC), just as we do as players, and if the mêlée MOBs are going to defend the ranged ones by physically blocking players from stopping ranged ones from targeting healers (uh oh, physics), and if MOBs will intelligently CC tanks/other threatening targets to shut up/stop them, such that players have to respond more dynamically to what is going on based upon seeing the MOBs behavior (not watching a UI element, like now), then that sounds great!

Now if instead you mean that the MOBs will be gaining a more sophisticated AI, such that they'll try to take down healers first regardless of other considerations (necessitating CC), just as we do as players, and if the mêlée MOBs are going to defend the ranged ones by physically blocking players from stopping ranged ones from targeting healers (uh oh, physics), and if MOBs will intelligently CC tanks/other threatening targets to shut up/stop them, such that players have to respond more dynamically to what is going on based upon seeing the MOBs behavior (not watching a UI element, like now), then that sounds great!

Sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but there is absolutely 100% no way that is going to happen.

That's the point. That's the point of all the class changes. By severely restricting what each class can do you limit the opportunties for some people to play better/worse than others. All this e-peening goes out the door and we can be all perfectly equal. It's completely consistent with the loot changes over the last year- you don't need skill to beat any instance- you just need enough time to grind out a 0.5% drop chance.

How about the "Big Battles" substitute for the instance cluster? Big Battles can't be lost. The Devs have said that the outcome is certain. All that matters is how big your victory is or how small your loss is. Everyone gets a trophy, it's just the size of the trophy in question. It's raiding with no wipes.

It's no coincidence that "The Great Dumbing Down of LoTRO" started when the Zynga guys were brought on. Players need to understand that come Helms Deep this is a totally different game. The metemorphosis will be complete. Your character name will be the same. You will still get to talk to Gandalf from time to time. You can still group in GLFF chat. But the rest of the game you loved is soon dead. Most of you will be better off watching the movies.

Originally Posted by bastiat1

It looks like you are quoting a post that was deleted. What was the violation?

I wonder the same thing. I saw the quoted post and scrolled back to +rep it (before remembering that rep is gone) and couldn't find your post.

I doubt you'll get an answer, but if you do, PM me. I'd love to hear it!

Minstrels (and a few other classes) still haven't heard a peep from anyone at Turbine or had a feedback thread in the past 8 months.

No class have gotten any mayor change since then & now ll will get some change in class trait for this new expansion. Ministrel & all other clsses will also get a devs diary eventually in orden alphabetic before Helms Deep get released.

[QUOTE} I'm guessing from reading further this is just an editing mistake and that should be off-tank rather than threat maybe?

Or am I reading this wrong?[/QUOTE]

I find this whole dev diary very concerning. There are currently two tanking lines for guardians - fighter of shadow concentrates on mitigations for when you are tanking one single boss who hits very hard. Defender of the Free concentrates on AOE threat for when you need to keep aggro on ten targets at once. One is for tanking a troll in Battle for Erebor, one is for tanking Flight to the Lonely Mountain.

I see nothing in this dev diary that suggests Verizal even fully understood what they were revamping before they started making changes. Now we're only going to have one tanking line for both those scenarios? They seem to be reducing the guardian role as a tank, instead of enhancing it, and trying to convince us to join the burgs as debuffers instead. Really? That's not why I created a tank.

Well i stopped playing my tank since rohan came out with the mounted combat (in my opinion tanks suck at mounted combat) and haven't played him since.
And indeed playing tank was boring just spam your agro skills accosianaly put a bleed on a mob to actually feel like you are contributing to the fight.

so i'm curious what my char (tank) would be played like with the new trait system.

The only possitive thing i can see with these trait trees is that you can swap in non combat between dps and tank and maybe a 3rd hybrid build for the situation. so no more visiting the bard but that's about it.

So i'll just wait and see what these trees give but i do not think i will be playing a tank again since i swapped him for a Warden wich was way more fun to play.

My two highest level characters are a Guardian and Champ. I never really thought they felt alike, even though I mostly played an Overpower Guardian, never tanking (since no one groups in this game, at least not with strangers, making it a moot point)

Champion it's mostly about building up focus, and then using your uber-skill. Other than clobbering an induction (which got nerfed), you just did your thing, not so much worrying things beyond your control.

Guardian is more reactive, with some skills only being responses to things you didn't have much control over. Like when your character parries, you can use the Retaliate skill (or Whirling to AOE), then either Overwhelm or Thrust.

While still only a summation, the candor and general prose of the diary made it a nice read. Note to dev's, this is the type of talk players I think will really gravitate too. Nice read, don't think I will be dusting off the guardian anytime soon but a nice presentation.

This is what I liked about the dev diary as well - the other diaries have not been so honest, nor have they described the thought process of the dev who created them, and I think the revamping of Keen Blade looks wonderful, so thank you for that Verizal.

However, to agree with what someone said above, at the heart of the class is the point that threat and tanking are indivisible. I'm hoping there were some typos in the dev diary, because if the blue line is for SURVIVABILITY (the word which was used in the diary was tanking) and the yellow is for THREAT, then guardians are going to have immense problems in accessing the important parts of each, especially considering what we've heard about how limited the ability to diversify your traits is, due to penalties in investing in other trait lines. So if we capped our out survivability tree, then we can't get near the capstone trait of the threat tree, and that is worrying, because my current tanking set up is 5x blue (all but thrill of danger + reactive blocks iirc) and 2x yellow (stoic/catch a breath or warrior's heart trait). This meant I could access the blue capstone, master of litany, which was our best threat creation skill, whilst still surviving well due to my strong blue and yellow traits, and the passives that I got at 2/3/4/5 for blue and 2 for yellow. Now, it seems that I won't be able to have both of these at the same time, which suggests that I can either have the aggro but be very squishy, or be unkillable but losing aggro to my raid. Neither of those situations is favourable, and as we are currently in the dark as to how threat is going to work, it seems that the essence of our class is being destroyed. Which is why we NEED that threat dev diary, or at least more information about traiting, so we can see what we can salvage from this mess.